Things That Annoy Me

As you know (or do now), I like lists. They are cute, in their own way. Sort of smug, but musical. I submit for your approval things that make me annoyed.

1. Unnecessary e's in business or product names. For example, more and more restaurants are calling themselves “bar and grille” with an e. This, apparently, is to separate them from a low-brow “grill,” where you can never expect better than hamburgers and fries. But for the discerning consumer who prefers jalapeño poppers and extreme fajitas, head on over to the Bar and Grille. I’m convinced they would put an e after "bar," too, if they could, except that “barre” is the bar ballet dancers hold onto at practice, and I’m guessing that’s not the image they want. Only slightly less annoying is "shoppe" with an e, frequently seen in high-end suburban strip malls with names like “The Shoppes on the Glen” or “The Canterbury Shoppes.” I encourage you, if you find yourself in front of a restaurant or business which is in clear violation of normal e usage, to boycott that establishment.

2. The embroidered short sleeved knit polo shirts that middle managers wear. Any time I’ve worked in retail or any type of hourly wage job, my managers have had these shirts. Sometimes they have little checkered designs on them, or stripes on the collars, and other times they’re just solid color. But they always have the annoying company logo sewn ever so tastefully and smugly over the left breast, as if to say, “Look at me, I don’t even really like this company but I am wearing this corporate catalog special to subtly assert my authority even while being remarkably unaware of how dumpy it makes me look.” Even if I see a guy wearing one on the street and I don’t even know him—the embroidered polo/khaki pants combination puts me in a bad mood, on everyone else’s behalf.

3. Advertisements that take trivial things and make them seem like life and death. Remember when the disposable toilet-cleaning brushes came out? They showed a normal toilet brush in extreme close-up with scary Star Wars-type music playing, and then showed all the things you must have to do to get it clean again, like power-washing it with a hose in the yard. Hello! Put some bleach on it! It's not like you have to eat off it! Germ-phobia is big business. There's another one for Lysol wipes or something, with similar scary music behind kids playing outside, blowing their nose, etc., and then touching things in the house. Why don't you be scared of something that will actually kill you? Like the bird flu. . .

Anyway.

4. Relating to this, advertisements that make it seem like you can be a wonderful, serene, perfect Zen-type person if you only buy their product. For example, Dove chocolate recently came out with ice cream bars. Have you seen the commercials for these? This woman eating the chocolate bar, savoring it blissfully, moaning in pleasure while swirls of red and brown silk flutter in the background. I always feel kind of gross when I watch that commercial. Note to advertising execs: don’t make your potential customers feel gross. She’s not even that good looking, not for a “chocolate equals sex” commercial. Although maybe guys find the woman pretty. Also consider the Uncle Ben’s rice commercial, where this frazzled woman comes home, obviously unable to handle the stress of balancing work and home life; she heats up her rice bowl, curls up in a big comfy chair, breathes deep, takes a bite of Uncle Ben’s, and suddenly all is right with the world. All it took was some rice! And lest you may think this is a gimmick used only for women, let me tell you about an SUV commerical (I can't remember which one it was for). It shows a young virile man (of course) kissing his (of course) beautiful, put-together, indulgent and 50’s-era providing wife goodbye and stepping out of his perfect white picket-fence house. “Off to work; see you tonight!” He whips out a helmet, straps it on, rock music starts in the background, and we see him hang glide (or something—I can’t remember) down to the bottom of a canyon (We now see the house was at the top of a cliff) where his car is. Yes, this SUV promises men freedom, adventure, and a tucked-away, warm, safe place to come home to. I’m saying. You can have it all if you buy this product. It annoys me, yes, but it works. So I guess I’m helpless to stop it.

5. This is more of a personal story: how when it's really cold out and people are getting on the bus, they go in and sit right down in the front instead of going to the back. This means that the rest of the people who aren't on the bus yet have to stay out in the cold waiting for people to sit down and get out of the way. If everyone just made a little effort and filled the back seats first, everyone could be warmer faster. Why can't people just realize this? Don't they put 2 and 2 together when they're at the back of the line and have to wait? People when they're on their way to work are more self-involved than I think they are normally. Not as nice. I'm working on a theory why.

6. Finally, the dried-up lotion goobers that get stuck on the end of lotion-bottle pumps. They grow and grow like slimy stalagtites until finally, one day, they fall off in your hand and you have to throw them away like real-life boogers. Or, less gross in the short term but possibly more annoying is when, because the pump is clogged, the lotion shoots out super-far and gets all over your clothes, or your dresser, or whatever. You have to take time out of your already-rushed morning to clean it up, especially if it gets on your clothes (it leaves a suspicious-looking stain) . We have engineers making robotic vacuums--we can't fix this? Priorities, priorities.